TOKYO, August 5 (RIA Novosti) – Tokyo is open to dialogue with Moscow despite having imposed sanctions against Russia, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news briefing Tuesday.
“In this regard, our position has not changed,” Suga said, answering a question about whether Japan would seek further dialogue with Russia after imposing sanctions.
Suga did not elaborate on the volume of assets Japan will freeze as part of the sanctions.
Earlier in the day, Japan formally approved sanctions on Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovych, as well as 39 senior Crimean officials, such as Crimea’s acting Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov, his economic adviser and former Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Temirgaliev, Crimean Rear Adm. Denis Berezovsky, who defected to Russia after being sent to the peninsula by Ukrainian authorities, and Alexei Chaly, a former governor of the Crimean port city Sevastopol.
The blacklist also features the leaders of the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk republics in eastern Ukraine, as well as a petroleum products terminal in the Crimean city of Feodosia.
The Japanese government introduced the list of new sanctions against Russia amid the Ukrainian crisis last week. The measures envisage the freezing of assets of individuals and entities “involved in the Crimea annexation and responsible for destabilizing the situation in Ukraine."
Japan was the last G7 member to apply sanctions against Russia: in March it stopped talks with Russia about the easing of visa requirements and denied visas to Russian officials on April 23 without making their names public.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said it considers Japan's new sanctions unfriendly. Moscow pointed out that this move brought Russia-Japan relations a few steps back and that Tokyo should realize that.
